Naming of gifts

Yesterday, I had tea with a fFriend, during which we had a brief conversation about gifts and "our measure of Light." What I didn't mention at the time was that I have been hungry to understand how it is that Friends name gifts for one another, and how Friends help bring these gifts forward. If anyone can make this implicit process more explicit, I'd be grateful.

I've been keeping my eyes and ears open about this question, too. I've run into a few Friends who will openly say, "You have a gift for this-or-that." Even I myself have mentioned to another, "I believe, So-and-So, that you have a gift in doing such-and-such." But it feels insufficient, and I am only now realizing that it may have something to do with being desirous to have those gifts named and affirmed by a faith community, corporately. Not in the sense of being recorded, but in the sense that when a specific talent or gift is needed, the community has a collective Light Bulb atop their heads that says, "Of course! Let's call on Friend Bessie for that!"

I hope you get my meaning.

It's like the difference between your parent or partner saying, "You're so good at that," as compared to when a group of people who know you less well invite you to do something, "because you're so good at that." The first one we doubt because we interpret it as coming from a sense of duty or loveship. The second one we may trust more because it comes seemingly unbidden, at least sometimes.

(I'll mention here that I will be talking with one of my blog elders a bit about some comments he made about how he is experiencing my spiritual gifts. This particular elder has a gift for naming other people's gifts, which is cool to witness. Yet our worship group remains uncertain what to do, once gifts have been named and affirmed....)

How is it that we as Friends name one another's gifts?

How might we nurture someone's gifts that she or he is not aware of?

What if a Friend believes her or his gifts lie in one area, but Nominating Committee--or another Friend--asks the person to serve in another capacity?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Later, after returning home from having tea, I decided to look up "gifts" in the index of Britain Yearly Meeting's Faith & Practice. Here is some of what I found:

13.09
...Where Friends know and trust one another the gifts we all have can be used more fully in obedience to the Inward Light...

12.04
The great aim of a Christian community is to enable its members to know what their gift is and then to enable them to exercise it to the glory of God. This may sometimes involve a prolonged and perhaps painful exercise before some members come to accept that the gift they have to offer is not the one they thought. (New life from old roots, 1965).

10.27
Are there not different states, different degrees, different growths, different places? ...Therefore, watch every one to feel and know his own place and service in the body, and to be sensible of the gifts, places, and services of others, that the Lord may be honored in all, and every one owned and honored in the Lord, and no otherwise. (Isaac Penington 1667)

3.22

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (I Corinthians 12:4-7)

It is a responsibility of a Christian community to enable its members to discover what their gifts are and to develop and exercise them to the glory of God.


Thanks for holding these questions with me, as well as sharing any thoughts and experiences you have had, either with helping Friends live more fully into their gifts, or having been helped by Friends to live more fully into your own.

Blessings,
Liz

[UPDATE: April 10, 2005. Some comments below refer to Elizabeth O'Connor, and other bloggers have posted about her writings and ministry, such as Alice.]

FAQs about the worship group

Here and there, readers and others ask about the worship group in which I participate. I thought I'd post a few "Frequently Asked Questions" so they'd be in one place for now.

[UPDATE, Second Month 2008: Details about Laughing Waters Friends Worship Group can now be found at our website.]

[UPDATE: Based on some counsel from one of my blog elders, I want to remind readers that the writings I offer here and throughout The Good Raised Up are my own. In particular, I recognize that the language used to describe the Divine may not accurately reflect Friends' own experience of the Divine. —Liz]

1. How did the worship group get started?

It depends on who you ask.

One Friend in the group will point to a book group I organized 3-4 years ago, on Lloyd Lee Wilson's Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order. The book group brought a few of us together who liked what we read and hungered for more. [Update: Other Friends in the group remind me that a few of us had begun a Bible study group, which was also a very significant experience and added yet another thread to the tapestry.]

But I always point to Friend Elizabeth: in her classic Minnesotan way, one summer she quietly began making a few phone calls: "Oh hi. I'm just calling to see if you would like to come by for a visit today or tomorrow, maybe have a bit of worship..." Some days there'd be just Elizabeth and me; other days, each of our partners would show up. And every now and then a third couple would join us, and we would spend a little more time in worship each time we'd get together, along with a bit of 'visiting.'

Our summer 'visits' transitioned in the fall into monthly meetings for worship at someone's house, which later transitioned into gathering for worship every other Monday night, when we were all free. Eventually, as we recognized that we were being spiritually fed and nourished by communing with the Spirit during our time together, the worship group became the primary spiritual home for a few of us, and we became clear to begin meeting weekly on First Days (Sundays).

We've been convening ourselves for more than two years now, meeting weekly since maybe September 2004. In addition to the original three couples--and the original two wee ones--we've had two other Friends join us regularly, a few drop in visitors, and a new baby join us... with another one on the way!

2. Is the worship group currently under the care of a monthly meeting or affiliated with a yearly meeting?

No, it's not. We are in a long, rich, and deliberate discernment process (which sometimes looks like plain ol' waiting) about whether to affiliate with liberal Friends (Northern Yearly Meeting) or Conservative Friends (Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative). (See #4 for more about Conservative Friends.)

We know NYM pretty well, since each of us comes with years of experience among these Friends. A few of us have visited IYMC annual and midyear sessions and have found our hearts and spirits made tender by the experience, in a way that hasn't happened for us at NYM. We continue to await clearness and Guidance, and we have asked to meet with Conservative Friends as Way opens, so we might learn more of that tradition and so they might help us understand how we are being called.

We are clear not to affiliate with a meeting at this time, physically or symbolically: we continue to meet in our homes, despite invitations to rent space from a local meeting.

3. How are other Friends in the area responding to your worship group?

Earlier there had been some talk among Friends about ours being a "secret" group or an exclusive one. We're relieved that the rumors about us being "secret" or "exclusive" are no longer around, from what I can tell. Though members of one monthly meeting in particular views the worship group as a "bud" of itself, we aren't spending energy diffusing this perspective, since it is a very sweet sentiment at its core.

4. Elsewhere you've mentioned that the worship group is "Conservative leaning" and that the group is discerning whether you are liberal or Conservative Friends. What does that mean?

Among us as a worship group, we have taken time to consider the different weight given to certain Quaker principles. What follows below, though, are my own expression of these principles, since we have not minuted formally any of our beliefs or practices:

• We unite in seeking and listening for the Spirit during our Meetings for Worship. With the variation of theology and spirituality among contemporary liberal Friends' meetings, there may be little or no commonality of how to participate in corporate worship.

• We give more weight to corporate discernment rather than to individual ideas. Liberal Friends more often seek to incorporate individual ideas and uphold individual leadings with less testing through a larger body.

• We are intentional and hold ourselves to greater discipline around seeking Divine Guidance and God's Will for us as we attend to business. Liberal Friends seem to be less disciplined around maintaining this intention: sometimes business sessions seem to tip the balance more to finding common ground and approving a particular good idea, rather than going a bit deeper into spiritual discernment to consider if in fact a certain direction is where God is wanting the meeting to go.

• We share and openly express a common belief in the centrality and presence of the Divine (God, Jesus, Spirit, the Light, etc.) in our individual and corporate lives. Liberal Friends typically have among them a spectrum of belief and practice that reflects "hyphenated" Quakers: Buddhist-Quakers, nontheist-Quakers, Jewish-Quakers. My limited experience of Conservative Friends seems to speak more to being Quaker-Quakers.

I use the phrase "Conservative leaning" because I--and we as a group--have not learned enough from Conservative Friends to know if we are Conservative Friends. I also use this phrase because it speaks more truthfully to my difficulty in remaining fully affiliated with the Hicksite monthly meeting that has care of my membership. Not to mention, it helps get a good conversation going about the branches of Quakerism!

The worship group is still learning what these principles mean, traditionally as well as geographically. Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative,, North Carolina Yearly Meeting Conservative, and Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative apparently each have a different feel in their faith and practice from one another.

5. How do you deal with the children in your worship group? And do you have regular business sessions?

The children are with us for the first part of worship, and they do well to join us in the silence. When we first started meeting regularly for worship, we would allow whoever was led to be with the children during worship, with one of the parents occasionally poking their heads in or whisking away a very discontented child. It was clear that some of us have less developed gifts to be with children than others. I surprised myself by wanting to be involved with the kids, and it's been easier for me to stay connected with them as they're getting older. Recently we've been experimenting with regular paid childcare, which for me is hard because of a sense of loss of personal connection... and we're not clear and have barely talked about any sort of religious education, either for the youngest of us or for the eldest of us. Stay tuned!

We don't yet have regular Meetings for Worship for Business. [UPDATE: In Fourth Month 2005, we approved holding MfWfB every other month.] We seem to wait for a few things to arise before we realize we need to carve out time to listen more intently to the Spirit as a body about how to proceed with certain concerns and ideas. The few times we've gathered for business, though, have also been rich and nourishing, and the sense of the Living Presence among us has been powerful as we seek to understand the sense of the meeting.

Here is the minute we approved at our first business session, describing who we understand ourselves to be:

Friends talked about a sense of cohesiveness among us and attributed it to the size of the group (being a small group) and to an intentionality to come together to seek, listen for, and love the Holy Spirit. We had a sense that what draws us together is the Spirit as opposed to historical concerns, social justice concerns, or Quaker literature. We give weight to how we wait on the Spirit--we talked about the discipline of patience, waiting, and listening.

We are laboring with the tension between the experience of worship and putting language to our experiences because language can be too small to describe the experience of worship.

All in all, this worship group has strengthened and sustained my Quakerism, which in turn has helped me stay connected, ironically perhaps, to the monthly meeting.

It's clear to me that the fruit of the Spirit is plentiful among us, and I pray we remain faithful as the worship group continues.

Blessings,
Liz

UPDATE: On 1 Sixth Month 2005, one couple within the worship group gave birth. Welcome, Grace! Out of curiosity, and with Grace's arrival, I calculated that the average age of Friends within the worship group is just under 26 years old. (Before Grace, it was 28.) The oldest Friends are 51 and 42; plus there are now 4 children under the age of 5. We are blessed...

UPDATE: On 28 Eighth Month 2005, the worship group warmly embraced the name Laughing Waters Friends Worship Group. We still are discerning if we are to affiliate with liberal Friends (Northern Yearly Meeting) or with Conservative Friends (Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative).

Some meetings are a rest stop

Recently, a fFriend gently invited me to consider that the monthly meeting, no longer able to meet and nourish my spiritual needs, might be a rest stop along the Quaker journey that I am taking.

Once the remark of that fFriend sunk in, I had to be willing to consider that I had mistakenly thought I could gently hijack the meeting--the bus and the bus driver--and change the route of the bus in order to accommodate where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there. What I needed to do instead was get off the bus and transfer to the bus that would get me to where I wanted to go. The monthly meeting was the rest stop and place of transfer where I could do that.

This same fFriend ministered to me that some meetings and worship groups have as its ministry its capacity to be a very fine rest stop for many a weary Quaker traveler who passes through, as well as being able to provide a longer respite for the settler who takes up residence there. Similarly, some Friends have the capacity to stay on a single bus throughout their Quaker journey.

I'm just not one of them, it seems.

Friends like me will ride one bus for awhile, learn what I can, and grow outside the lines. After considering where I am called to be and by what route I might get there, I just may have to transfer at the next stop and leave the meeting behind.

It has never been easy for me to say goodbye to a beloved community that has nurtured me and grown me for so long. It does not mean that I will never return; it may mean that I may be gone for quite a while in-between visits.

. . . . . . . . . .

P.S. Meredith shares a bit about her own journey among Friends, in a comment to a post at Beppeblog. I didn't feel I could post the above piece without lifting up Meredith's experience of being faithful to her measure of Light within her faith community:

I, like you, have gone through similar deliberations about whether I should continue to attend or simply fade away into some other manner of spiritual enrichment. I can remember thinking that in my small worship group there was something fundamentally very 'wrong' because we rarely spoke of anything spiritual. My Friends enjoyed talking politics, environmental subjects, and what they noticed in their garden or what they had heard on the radio that morning. But there was little to no discussion of God. In my own silence, I began to feel a strong leading. My own 'private practice' had recently become very spirit filled, and I longed to share this. My leading had to do with just that. Maybe my Meeting was waiting for just this opportunity. I began to share more spiritual content – my own experience, readings from Quaker writers, and Biblical and Faith and Practice queries. Now, our Meeting has become much more focused on the Presence of God, of the Christ within our midst. Since half of our Meeting time is discussion, we have a wonderful opportunity query, reflect, and share. Sometimes we utilize Quaker Dialogue practice, and sometimes a freer form of dialogue. Since this change, I have sense that others have had a renewed purpose for attending Meeting along with me.

I only mention this because of what I learned: my feelings of being on that ‘leaving precipice’ were truly the catalyst for change that was well received by the Meeting. It has lead to a deepening of the spiritual life of our Meeting, and an enriched spiritual relationship for each of us. Another thing that I learned was that I needed to stop wishing that my fellow Friends would be different than they are. It seems we all journey at our own pace, and our timing for growth and revelation is unique. My wishing that my Friends would be ‘more spiritual’ or more focused, or knowledgeable of the Bible simply led to frustration and suffering in the Meeting for me. Letting go of this, and moving simply as I felt led to do, has made all the difference.

Given the journey I've been traveling, I guess I can end with the same thought:

Learning to let go of wishing that Friends would be more, and moving simply as I feel led, has made all the difference.

Blessings,
Liz

Ageism and youth ministry

Friends, I would encourage you to put aside the time to visit the original post and its many responses about youth ministry among Friends over at Quaker Ranter.

I would also make this suggestion: that we consider reading the material in the frame of mind-and-heart as one listens to vocal ministry during meeting for worship among a beloved community. There is much material here. There is much pain here. There is much energy here. There is much to be witnessed, and there is much to be shared.

The electronic form of blogging, like email, is new to us as Friends. Our way to labor with one another is sometimes uncertain as we communicate deep, complex spiritual and theological ideas, leadings, and concerns.

Therefore as we read, read slowly. Breathe often. Consider posting a comment only after we have slowed down enough to respond thoughtfully and prayerfully. Breathe again.

While reviewing the ever-growing number of comments to the original post, I have had to be willing to look at and read about the elephants in the room as well as the ghosts and skeletons in the closet. I have had to consider that that which doesn't seem to exist in my own room or closet doesn't mean it doesn't actually exist in someone else's.

If the Spirit moves you, be part of the group of Friends that are holding these concerns and carrying them in their hearts. Let us also openly acknowledge what is for many of us—many but not all—the fear of tension or of conflict or of differences of perspective. Let us lean into it nonetheless, rather than ignore it, and let us together watch for the Light emerging and listen for the Whisper and the Shout of the Spirit.